A British court on Thursday found a Briton guilty of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder a well-known British TV presenter after an undercover US police officer uncovered the suspect's plan, according to reports.
Gavin Plumb, 37, of Harlow, Essex, was found guilty after an eight-day trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, which considered evidence of Plumb's plot to realise a fantasy about former ITV star Holly Willoughby. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report.
The undercover US agent who discovered Plum's plot reportedly used the pseudonym David Nelson. He discovered the plot on October 3, 2023 in the online group “Abduction Lovers” and reported it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the report revealed.
According to the Daily Mail, Essex Police, acting on a tip-off from the FBI, raided Plumb's home on October 4 and arrested him.
Nelson, an expert with the Owatonna Police Department in Minnesota on identifying planned kidnappings, rapes and murders online, testified in court that Plumb had posted four photos of Willoughby via video link to a “kidnapping enthusiasts” group on the encrypted messaging app Kik, the Daily Mail reported. reportPlum captioned the photo, “All I want is public attention,” Nelson reportedly added.
Nelson was quoted as saying Plumb's post was “enough to set off the alarm bells.”
Nelson reportedly offered to help carry out the plan by writing to Plum, “OK, I'll try. Who's the cross-eyed hot guy?”
“She's in the public eye, but she doesn't have her own security and she doesn't have security cameras in her home,” Plum, who uses the username Big Bear, reportedly replied.
“They're going to jump over the outside wall, come in, chloroform her and her husband, zip-tie them, gag them, take her out of the house and take her in their car,” Plumb said. Reportedly Nelson.
Plumb also reportedly planned to sexually torture Willoughby at an abandoned stud farm.
“When you get bored [sic] “Once we kill her, we'll dispose of her…we'll wash her in bleach and drown her in the lake at night. After slitting her throat, of course,” Plumb reportedly added.
Nelson then reportedly sent Plumb pictures of plane tickets and a fake photo ID.
Plumb also reportedly tried to get Willoughby to confess that she had been with the conspirators “of her own free will, and that she had given her full consent to everything we did to her, so that we could get away with it.” (RELATED: 'Sinister': Kidnapping and death threats against Holly Willoughby force show off the air)
According to the Daily Mail, Plumb's lawyer, Sasha Wass, suggested it was “fairly common” that posts by Abduct Lovers members were “clearly fantasies”.
But prosecutor Nicola Rice described Plumb's plot as “horrifying”, adding that he was “a dangerous man who masqueraded as a harmless dreamer but plotted unspeakable violence against one of the country's best known figures”, reported the BBC.
Plumb has been convicted and sentenced twice before – first in August 2006 for trying to force two flight attendants off a train within three days of each other because he had delusions of being a stewardess, and secondly for tying up two 16-year-old girls and forcing them into a shop, the BBC revealed.
Willoughby ended her 14-year tenure on ITV's This Morning in October 2023 after discovering Plumb's plot and receiving round-the-clock police protection. “I will be forever grateful to the undercover officers who realised the imminent threat and to the Metropolitan and Essex Police for their swift response,” she was reported as saying.
Plumb reportedly cried in court when he heard his sentence would be handed down on July 12.
